The cholera’s arrival was officially announced on March 29, and as this was the day of Mid-Lent, and there was bright sunshine and beautiful weather, the Parisians hustled and fluttered the more merrily on the boulevards, where one could even see maskers, who in caricatures of livid color and sickly mien, mocked the fear of the cholera and the disease itself.
That night the balls were more crowded than usual; excessive laughter almost drowned the roar of music; people grew hot in the chahut, a dance of anything but equivocal character; all kinds of ices and cold beverages were in great demand when all at once the merriest of the harlequins felt that his legs were becoming much too cold and took off his mask, when, to the amazement of all, a violet-blue face became visible. It was at once seen that there was no jest in this, the laughter died away, and at once several carriages conveyed men and women from the ball to the Hôtel-Dieu, the central hospital, where they, still arrayed in mask attire, soon died. As in the first shock of terror, people believed cholera was contagious, and as those who were already patients in the hospital raised cruel screams of fear, it is said that these dead were buried so promptly that even their fantastic fools’ garments were left on them, so that as they lived they now lie merrily in the grave.
There rose all at once a rumor that many of those who had been so promptly buried had died not from disease but by poison. It was said that certain persons had found out how to introduce a poison into all kinds of food, be it in the vegetable markets, in bakeries, meat stalls, or wine. The more extraordinary these reports were, the more eagerly were they received by the multitude, and even the skeptics must necessarily believe in them when an order on the subject was published by the chief of police. For the police, who in every country seem to be less inclined to prevent crime than to appear to know all about it, either desired to display their universal information or else thought, regarding the tales of poisoning, that whether they were true or false, they themselves must in any case divert all suspicion from the government. Suffice it to say that by their unfortunate proclamation, in which they distinctly said they were on the track of the poisoners, they officially confirmed the rumors, and thereby threw all Paris into the most dreadful apprehension of death.
“We never heard the like!” said the oldest people, who even in the most dreadful times of the Revolution had never experienced such fearful crime. “Frenchmen! We are dishonored!” cried the men, striking their foreheads. The women, pressing their little children in agony to their hearts, wept bitterly and lamented that the innocent babes were dying in their arms. The poor people dared neither eat nor drink and wrung their hands in dire need and distress. It seemed as if the end of the world had come. The crowds assembled chiefly at the corners of the streets, where the red-painted wine shops are situated, and it was generally there that men who seemed suspicious were searched, and woe to them when any doubtful objects were found on them. The mob threw themselves like wild beasts or lunatics on their victims. Many saved themselves by their presence of mind, others were rescued by the firmness of the Municipal Guard, who in those days patrolled everywhere. Some received wounds or were maimed, while six men were unmercifully murdered outright. Nothing is so horrible as the anger of a mob when it rages for blood and strangles its defenseless prey. Then there rolled through the streets a dark flood of human beings in which, here and there, workmen in their shirtsleeves seemed like the white caps of a raging sea, and all were howling and roaring—all merciless, heathenish, devilish. In the rue de Vaugirard, where two men were killed because certain white powders were found on them, I saw one of the wretches while he was still in the death rattle, and old women plucked the wooden shoes from their feet and beat him on the head till he was dead. He was naked and beaten and bruised, so that his blood flowed; they tore from him not only his clothes but also his hair and cut off his lips and nose; and one blackguard tied a rope to the feet of the corpse and dragged it through the streets, crying out, “Voilà le cholera morbus!”
It appeared the next day in the newspapers that the wretched men who had been so cruelly murdered were all quite innocent, that the suspicious powders found on them consisted of camphor or chlorine or some other kind of remedy against cholera, and that those who were said to have been poisoned had died naturally of the prevailing epidemic. The mob here, like the same everywhere, being quick to rage and readily led to cruelty, became at once appeased and deplored with touching sorrow its rash deeds when it heard the voice of reason. With such voices the newspapers succeeded the next day in calming and quieting the populace, and it may be proclaimed, as a triumph of the press, that it was able to so promptly stop the mischief that the police had made.
From French Affairs. In the spring of 1831, the poet left his native Germany for Paris and began writing a series of newspaper articles reporting on the new political and social order in France, which he eventually published as French Affairs. In March of the following year, cholera patients from across the city began filling up the Hôtel-Dieu hospital on the Île de la Cité. The ensuing six-month epidemic killed nineteen thousand Parisians and led to reforms in hygiene and urban planning, and ultimately to Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s grand reorganization of Paris twenty years later.
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